Let loose: Strategies for supplier engagement with buyer sustainability objectives in South Africa

The supply chain has substantial relevance for firms’ environmental responsibility. Many firms struggle how to engage their suppliers in improving environmental performance. Coercive, compliance-focused approaches often achieve disappointing results, and risk the deterioration of buyer-supplier relationships. Collaborative, or ‘enabling’ supplier engagement approaches have been discussed conceptually, but few empirical studies exist about their effectiveness. We conducted a field experiment with the supplier community of a South African insurance company to directly compare coercive and enabling supplier interventions. We found that enabling interventions positively affects suppliers’ attitudes towards sustainability issues, and that the positive effect is moderated by suppliers’ ex-ante attitudes towards bureaucracy in the supply chain.